


Precipitate

by femmenoire



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 16:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11040252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmenoire/pseuds/femmenoire
Summary: Ginny. Dancing in the rain.Soundtrack: Carly Rae Jepson, "Cut to the Feeling" & "Run Away With Me"





	Precipitate

She had ants in her pants. 

That’s what her dad used to call the jittery feeling she got the night before a game. 

She was old enough to know that it was anxiety. But still… ants in her pants. 

She had paced her hotel room first. Then the hallways. Then she’d done a few laps up two flights of stairs and back. 

But still… ants in her pants. 

The first crack of thunder made her jump. She was on the fourteenth floor, just turning around to head back down.

She glanced out of the window on the twelfth floor. She was breathing a tiny bit harder than normal, mostly from her own self-consciousness. The sky was dark. The raindrops were sparse, but as she watched, they became fat, splattering obscenely against the windows. 

The memory hit her like a brick. She was thirteen. They’d traveled to Palo Alto for a little league game. There was a boycott against her (how dare a girl play on the same team as boys). She remembered the way her heart beast fast and her hands shook. She was scared. Her father knew she was scared. 

“Come on,” he’d growled, in that harsh voice that was equal parts daddy and coach. 

She’d followed him down the hotel stairs trying to calculate how to adapt her throw for the weather. When they’d reached the lobby she’d all but figured out a way to adjust her hold and release the ball a bit earlier than she normally would. 

She followed him out to the hotel’s back patio and then he’d turned round to fix her with his gaze. He was as he always was in life, and still in her dreams: tall, imposing, demanding, shrouded in love. 

“Do you feel that,” he said.

She shook her head and swiped the rain from her eyes. “Feel what?”

He stepped closer and placed his hand, heavy, on her shoulder. “Let it wash over you. Just for now let this rain wash away all of that fear you have right here,” he squeezed her left shoulder. “Just let yourself be free for a little bit.” 

Ginny tipped her head back and closed her eyes.

The rain was cool against her overheated skin.

“That’s it,” he said, encouraging. Ever her coach. Always her dad. 

She spread her arms out. Her clothes were becoming soaked, heavy. She didn’t care.

She peaked her right eye open to see him. 

His head was tilted back just like hers, his eyes closed as the water washed over him. 

Her father was happy. And so was she. 

Once upon a time. 

Ginny swallowed the sob in her throat, her vision blurred by the rain splashing against the window and her tears.

She was running down the stairs before she’d made the decision to move. She hoped no one would see her, but also she didn’t care. 

All she could see was her father’s face. Kind but stern. Gone.

***

“Ginny?”

Mike raised his voice but stopped short of yelling. He didn’t want to startle her or draw any more attention to their star female pitcher running out into the rain like a loon. 

With tears in her eyes. 

He followed her through the hotel lobby into the empty courtyard. The raindrops were loud in the pool. There was an older man lying on a sad plastic lounger, a lit cigarette between his lips. 

He didn’t pay Ginny any mind and so Mike ignored him as well. 

“Can you feel that?”

She whispered the words and he wasn’t sure if they weren’t mean for him or if she wanted them to melt into the atmosphere. 

“I feel it,” he said, also in whisper. 

She didn’t react, so he assumed she hadn’t heard him. He breathed a sigh of relief, but he kept his eyes trained on her. 

Her hair was curly, wet, sticking to her face. Her loose white t-shirt was growing more see through by the minute, clinging to her body. 

He forced himself to look away. 

“I can feel it,” he mumbled again to himself. 

***

She could barely see through her drenched eyelashes. 

But she could see him. 

“I just want to let go,” she said, staring at his lips until he tilted his head to make eye contact. 

His smile was rueful, but wide. “I’m not sure you know how to do that.”

Her smile faltered, but her courage didn’t. She was full of pain and embarrassment if you scratched the surface, but she shrugged all of that off tonight. “Maybe, but I think I can get close.” 

She tilted her head back again, trying to see the sky through the downfall, enjoying the feeling of the rain baptizing her face. She opened her mouth, spread her arms. And she swore she could feel him there. 

“Just let yourself be free,” he said in her mind’s eye. 

“I just want to be free,” she said, to Mike, to no one, “for just a little while.”

***

Mike had been married twice. This should have been all old hype. But it wasn’t. 

She spread her arms out wide. If he looked closely, he would be able to see her bra clearly through her now transparent t-shirt, her nipples hard in the slightly cool air. But he didn’t look. At least not at her chest. 

Instead he watched her face as she spun around in the rain. She smiled. It was the first real smile he’d ever seen on her. It wasn’t fake camaraderie, tinged with fear or uncomfortable twenty-something who’d never quite lived and so wasn’t quite sure what carefree looked, let alone felt, like.

It was beautiful, unselfconscious happiness. 

He hadn’t meant to do it, but he was standing guard. 

He turned to glare into the hotel lobby, not shocked to see their teammates staring out at the courtyard wondering what the fuck Ginny was doing; if she was broken again. But they’d dispersed at his hard glare.

The only one with enough balls to open the door was Blip. 

“Is uh… everything all right out here?”

He only glanced at his friend. “Everything’s fine.” He couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his lips. “She just wants to be free for a little while.” And then after a pause that could have been a few seconds or a few minutes. “She needs this.”

He could hear the smug smile in Blip’s voice. “Yea, she does. But what about you?”

Mike opened his mouth to answer, but snapped his lips shut before he could make a sound. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the answer, it was just that he wasn’t anywhere near ready to admit that the feeling he got in the pit of his stomach whenever Ginny was around scared the shit out of him. 

And besides, they were on the road to the playoffs. They’d all been working their asses off to get there and some dumb infatuation was no reason to rob his teammates of that. Especially not Ginny. 

So he stood guard at the patio door and watched her twirl around in the rain, making sure no one bothered her. And he shoved his feelings deep down so that tomorrow, when they stepped on the pitch, he could be the catcher she needed. He could be that for her, better than boyfriend, lover or husband.

***

Mike was up early. 

He was picking over the continental breakfast, grumpy, worried that he might be coming down with a cold after standing in the rain for the better part of an hour. 

“Do you have a light,” an old, dry voice said. 

Mike startled and turned to see a familiar face, even though he couldn’t quite place it. 

“You can’t smoke in here,” Mike replied. 

“Hmm,” the old man mumbled, still patting down his pockets apparently looking for his own lighter. “So the girl…”

“What,” Mike said, even as it dawned on him where he recognized the old man from. “You were out back last night smoking in the rain.”

“That was me,” the old man said, fishing in his left pocket. 

“You could catch a cold and die,” Mike replied, sounding exactly like his mother, but not caring because this guy was positively ancient. 

The man pulled a lighter from his pocket, the glee brightening his deeply wrinkled face. “Well like you said; I can’t smoke in here.” He turned toward the patio doors and took a few steps away from Mike. “You should tell her,” he threw over his shoulder. 

“Tell who what,” Mike yelled a little louder than was necessary. His heartbeat quickening. 

“The girl. The one who was dancing in the rain.”

“Ginny,” Mike said before he could stop himself. 

The old man turned around and smiled, his flabby eyelids and big cheeks all but disappearing his eyes. “Ginny,” he said, as if he was testing the word on his tongue. And then he looked at Mike, full on eye contact. “You should tell Ginny that you’re in love with her.” He paused and gauged Mike’s expression. “Or maybe you should admit it to yourself first.”

***

“Hey,” Ginny said, draping herself over the seat next to him. 

Mike startled and his cheeks blushed. 

“What’s wrong with you,” she said, that cocky smirk on her face that he hated and loved. Loved. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. Not because it felt wrong, but because love was something Mike associated with sex. And he and Ginny had never… he’d never even allowed himself to think about it. Or, more accurately, he’d never admitted to himself that sometimes, when he was jerking off the night before a game or when he was fucking some random bartender in one of the backwater towns where they stopped to stay or just sleep, because the town where they were actually playing was too small for a hotel that could accommodate the whole team, he saw her face. Right before he let himself come, filling a condom balls deep in someone else or spurting all over his hand and stomach, he would conjure her face. It was her face that got him over the home plate. He’d never been willing to acknowledge it. 

But now, with her curly hair free from the bun she always wore on the pitch, her strands dangling close enough for him to smell the slight citrus scent of her conditioner, he couldn’t think of anything else.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, shifting in his seat. 

She was silent, appraising him. He refused to put a hand over his lap, just in case it drew her attention to his quickly hardening dick. 

“If you say so,” she said flippantly. “I just…”

He turned his head to look at her. They made eye contact. 

“I just wanted to say thank you,” she said, licking her lips. “For yesterday. I just…”

“You just wanted to be free,” he replied. 

“Yea,” she said. “It was my dad’s thing, when I got too worked up, to twirl in the rain. Or hold my breath and stay underwater in a pool. I’m not sure why, but it works.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me rookie,” he said, cringing at the way he sounded like her catcher and not… well not the kind of guy whose dick was heavy against his right thigh at the sight of her big, dark eyes and full lips. “You deserve it,” he said turning away from her. 

She was silent again, for a little while. “Thanks,” she said before sliding back into her seat. 

“Anytime,” he said, before he could stop himself. 

She didn’t respond. 

He wasn’t sure if she’d heard him.


End file.
